Scenes from the Life of St Bertin

religious

Simon Marmion of Amiens played a significant role in French painting in the mid-fifteenth century. The composition representing the life of St Bertin was formerly part of the altarpiece of the monastery of St Omer. In the left corner of the left shutter is the founder of the monastery, the Abbot Guillaume Fillastre, Bishop of Tours; beside him are scenes of the birth of the saint, his admission to the Benedictine Order, his arrival at Thérouane as a pilgrim and the dedication and building of a new monastery.

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About the Artist

Simon Marmion

1420 – 1489

Franco-Flemish manuscript illuminator and painter. In 1449-54 he was at Amiens, where he may have been born, and he was a member of the Tournai guild in 1468, but the greater part of his working life was spent at Valenciennes. He had a great reputation in his day, but no works certainly from his hand survived. The main work attributed to him is the retable of St Bertin (1459, most of it in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, fragments in the National Gallery, London). His style was very tender, with delicate, almost pastel colouring, and does not belong to the mainstream of either French or Netherlandish art.

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